TikTok under attack amid fears it is harvesting data 

Musical.ly was created by Chinese entrepreneurs Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang in 2014, while ByteDance launched TikTok locally in 2016 and globally the following year.

Western crackdown

By last November, more than 12 US states were banning agencies from using TikTok, rising to 27 in January.  Universities have also been blocking access to it through their Wi-Fi networks, with the University of Texas at Houston the most prominent among them. 

While the app is already banned on devices used by the country's military and coast guard, the ban does not extend to private devices. University students can switch to cellular networks to use TikTok where the app is restricted on Wi-Fi.

And so, some members of Congress, particularly the House Foreign Affairs Committee, are pushing for a total TikTok ban across the US, hence the vote backing the president being given such powers. Courts blocked a previous executive order banning TikTok signed by President Donald Trump when he was in office. 

There have been other attempts to use primary legislation to set up a lasting ban. In December, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley in-troduced such a bill. Another, submitted in the same month by Republican and Democratic lawmakers, was wider, and would ban not just TikTok, but any social media apps with Chinese, Russian, or Iranian ownership.

TikTok has been answering questions from the US Committee on Foreign Investment for years about the app and ByteDance's relationship with the Chinese government and how it deals with user data. 

Company officials say they have not yet received replies to a detailed document they submitted to the committee in August on their plans to cooperate with Washington to address security concerns. 

In 2019, the committee launched an investigation into TikTok's purchase of Musical.ly, after the Trump Administration restricted investment activities by Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei against the backdrop of fears that its G5 network poses threats to US national security. 

As TikTok gained popularity in the United States starting in 2020, Trump vowed to ban it because Chinese authorities could use it to "build dossiers of personal information for blackmail and conduct corporate espionage."

Biden reversal

In June 2021, Biden eased some of the Trump's restrictions on Chinese apps, including TikTok, in a change of tone with his predecessor's administration and its trade war with Beijing, which dated back to 2018. 

The attempt at detente did not last and US-China relations have become more strained due in part to US concerns about China's accelerating technological development, Washington's criticism of Beijing's human rights record, and rivalry for influence in the Indo-Pacific region. 

It has brought talk of restrictions on Chinese apps back to the forefront. TikTok has responded by saying that US and EU decisions are "misguided," and its CEO, Shou Zi Chew, is expected to appear before Congress in late March to answer questions in person. 

The Financial Times reported that Shou knows that the fate of the app depends on his success in alleviating US concerns, adding that many of his aides are supporting him in preparation for the task. 

Meanwhile, Congress is expected to raise additional concerns on top of national security. The FT said the House's Energy and Commerce Com-mittee will bring up the issue of protecting children from harmful content that may be visible in the app.

The Chinese government owns a stake in the parent company of ByteDance via state investment instruments, which underpins foreign concerns in general and Western concerns about the possible access of Chinese government security services to TikTok's user data. 

Legitimate concern

It gives the worries some legitimacy, as does the presence on the company's board of directors of Wu Shugang, a senior official in China's all-powerful Communist Party. He is reported to be hostile to Chinese liberals, calling them bearers of Western values.

Chinese law allows authorities to request data from companies operating in the country and prevent them from taking data to other countries. While TikTok denies transferring any data to Chinese authorities, it acknowledges that TikTok employees working in China and the United States inappropriately handled user data in the summer of 2022.

TikTok said the employees involved had left their jobs. The app pledged to store the data of European users — estimated at more than 150 million people — in three European canters for which it allocated €600mn ($640mn).

It began to set up two centres in Dublin and has not yet decid-ed on the location of third.

Parent company

The main entity of ByteDance is Beijing ByteDance Technology Co. Ltd., a private multinational enterprise engaged in online technology and operating several popular mobile apps, including TikTok, Doyin (the Chinese version of TikTok ), Toutiao (a news and information platform), and others. The company was founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming and is head-quartered in Beijing.

The voyage of its flagship to the status of one of the world's most popular social media apps, capturing the attention of a younger generation with short videos and a global audience, is not its only achievement. Doyin is very popular in China, with more than 600 million daily users. The company expanded into the gaming industry through the acquisition of the mobile gaming developer Moonton.

By 2021, ByteDance's market value was estimated at more than $180bn, making it one of the most valuable start-ups in the world. TikTok has been downloaded more than 2.6 billion times globally. It has more than one bil-lion active users, with the vast majority of them in Asia. 

In 2020, ByteDance generated more than $34 billion in revenue, up from $7.4 billion in 2018. The company employs more than 100,000 people worldwide, most based in China. 

In 2021, the company raised more than $7bn in funding from investors, including Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, and SoftBank. All of those backers are multinational corporations — the first two are based in the US, while the third is Japanese. 

ByteDance has grown rapidly in recent years, and there are elements of its future that look bright as it prepares to continue expanding its reach and impact in the technology sector, in the face of scrutiny in the West.

One of the key areas in which it is likely to focus its efforts is artificial intelligence. It invests heavily in research and development in this area, and its expertise in this field has helped in driving the success of its various apps. 

Social commerce

In the future, ByteDance is likely to use Artificial Intelligence to create more engaging and personalised user experiences, as well as to improve its advertising capabilities and general business processes. Another important trend for the company is the growth of social commerce, or the use of social media platforms to facilitate online shopping.

TikTok has already made some strides in this area, introducing features like video ads and in-app stores. It is likely to expand these efforts, lever-aging its huge user base to become a major player in e-commerce.

But ByteDance's success has not gone unnoticed by regulators around the world. The company has faced scrutiny and legal challenges in various markets, with the current concerns over data privacy and national security foremost among them. 

The company will need to navigate these challenges carefully to ensure that its growth trajectory continues, particularly that ByteDance is not publicly traded, hence, it is not obliged to disclose its figures in line with rules that govern listed companies.